Asia comes of age

Dealers are increasingly offering exchange-traded funds (ETFs) to retail investors to give them access to asset classes and instruments traditionally not available to them. At the same time, regional exchanges are trying to bolster their ETF business. Is this good news for investors? Ben Marquand investigates

While the exchange-traded fund (ETF) market in Asia is much smaller and more immature than the European and the US markets, it has been rapidly expanding throughout the global economic crisis. Assets under management (AUM) for iShares ETFs in the Asia ex-Japan region, for example, reached $4.3 billion by end of 2008, a 43.7% increase in AUM over the previous year. On a global basis, iShares, a leading provider of ETFs, reported net inflows of $89 billion in new ETF assets for 2008, compared with